A Small Act of Kindness Saved My Life
Yet they don’t even know they saved me
For the bulk of my young life, my most vivid memories are of me wanting or waiting to die.
Life’s strange that way.
As a kid, I couldn’t imagine growing up. Yes, I wanted to be bigger, and stronger, and more independent. But as I aged, my body changed in ways I didn’t expect — ways which felt wrong, twisted, and diseased.
This body betrayed me. I had the mind of a boy but the body of a girl.
I gained hips. I gained breasts. Nature didn’t care that I was transgender.
Overnight, boys found me something good to look at while I wanted nothing more than to bury myself six feet down in our neighborhood cemetery.
If I had to pinpoint the time in my life when my depression began, I’d likely choose sometime around this age: that dreadful Age of Puberty.
Growing up as a young transgender man in the rural Bible Belt, I didn’t know the word “transgender.” I didn’t know anything about the LGBTQ-plus community.
I knew, on some deeper level, ever since I was a child, that I was a boy. I don’t have a deep explanation for how I knew. For me, it’s like knowing how to breathe, how to smell, how to see — I just knew.
